


an age at least to every part

by PaleBlueEis



Series: an age at least to every part [1]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: 6000 Years of Slow Burn (Good Omens), Angel Healing, Aziraphale Has Feelings (Good Omens), Aziraphale Is Trying (Good Omens), Aziraphale needs a Prufrock trigger warning, Banter, Crowley Has Self-Esteem Issues (Good Omens), Crowley is Bad at Feelings (Good Omens), Crowley is a Mess (Good Omens), Dialogue Heavy, Dining at the Ritz (Good Omens), Honestly if it's not dialogue it's interior monologue, Idiots in Love, Ineffable Idiots (Good Omens), M/M, Panic Attacks, Pinetrees are evergreens, Post-Almost Apocalypse (Good Omens), Post-Scene: The Ritz (Good Omens), References to P.G. Wodehouse, Romeo and Juliet References, Shakespeare cameo, T. S. Eliot References, T. S. Eliot was a wanker
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-11
Updated: 2020-10-11
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:26:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26953591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PaleBlueEis/pseuds/PaleBlueEis
Summary: Having successfully muddled their way through averting the Apocalypse, Crowley and Aziraphale drink and argue about brandy designations and poetry.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: an age at least to every part [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1981162
Comments: 18
Kudos: 67





	an age at least to every part

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: No actual poems were harmed in the writing of this fic.

Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;  
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous--

\--T. S. Eliot

It was a great relief to Crowley to be back in his own body again. Not that it was his favorite body in the abstract sense, far from it—it was fine, got him around, looked well enough in tight-fitting trousers. It was more that he’d gotten used to it over the years, and he certainly enjoyed the view _from_ it better than the view _of_ it. It had been strange looking out at his own odd angles from inside a body he’d spent centuries gazing at with more satisfaction.

Crowley stretched his legs under the table and swirled his brandy in its tulip shaped glass. It cast a mellow glow across the table in a way that suited his mood, and when he held the glass up to the light, the reflection spilled out over the dining room’s shades of white and gold—chandeliers, drapes, tablecloths, and even the angel sitting across from him, all bathed in its liquid warmth.

Aziraphale, lingering appealingly over cake and coffee, was nattering on about various books that had showed up unannounced in his resurrected bookshop.

“You know,” he said, as if Crowley would, “some of the new items are really quite fine. It’s a bit like a treasure hunt. Why, I even came across a splendid early _Treasure Island_ today—the lovely one with the July advertisements, and the overstamped seven on the page number at 127 and--” the angel checked himself, as if realizing his company might not be as entranced by the presence of the overstamped seven as he was himself. 

“In any case,” he said, breathing in a deep contentment, “it shows a very impressive attention to detail for an eleven year-old. I mean, that was on his own initiative. I’ve hardly focused on children’s books….”

Crowley let Aziraphale talk on. He’d long found a way of weaving in and out of conversations that turned to the more arcane elements of first editions and errata. He did enjoy watching Aziraphale’s pleasure in his books, and sometimes the anecdotes of various readers and writers that would follow were well worth attending to. In this case, since it meant that Aziraphale had a bookstore full of books to go on about rather than a burnt out shell filled with paper ash, charred vellum, and a cavernous absence of angel, it was all particularly welcome. And since the angel had only been able to give his stock a brief once-over earlier, Crowley felt certain he’d have plenty of similar conversations to enjoy in the near future.

The angel and the demon had been eating and drinking at the Ritz for hours now, celebrating their newfound freedom slowly but steadily enough that whatever sharp edges the room had had on offer were gone long before they’d got to the top shelf brandy.

What was stranger was that Crowley felt as if his own sharp edges had been smoothed away before they’d even sat down to begin with. In fact, Crowley wasn’t sure that anything at all would bother him, ever again. He almost said so, but thought better of it. Aziraphale might take it as a challenge—a challenge he hardly needed under normal circumstances. It didn’t take much for the angel to get Crowley bothered, especially when you added a “hot and” to the equation.

Not that the angel seemed to go in much for _that_ himself _—_ on the whole, his lot didn’t. Angels and all. Bit of a purity kink—without the kink part, naturally. And Crowley, while not beyond a dirty joke or teasing comment now and again for their sheer angel-flustering capacity, was hardly one to push the issue.

Crowley sighed and shifted his legs again. A bit of unrequited wanting wasn’t enough to bring down his mood—not even close. It reminded him that there’d be time enough later for pining after things he couldn’t have—he’d always found time for that over the past six or so millennia, and now that there was a future full of time again, a luxury he’d thought he’d lost, he’d be sure to get around to it sooner or later.

 _World enough and time,_ he thought. Worlds _enough,_ he’d been thinking as he’d tried to whisk his angel away to the stars.

Either way, he mused, it wouldn’t have been. Enough wasn’t an idea that applied to the angel.

Case in point, it looked as if Crowley would be getting back to some part-time pining sooner rather than later, because Aziraphale looked more edible than the cake he was savoring with an expression that could only be described as … bliss. But if Crowley tended to wonder what else he might do to put that look on the angel’s face in a more private setting, well, that was no one’s business but his own. Not anymore.

“I know you aren’t one for sweet things after meals, my dear, but this is _delicious_ ,” enthused Aziraphale, as if that opinion wasn’t broadcast from every delighted feature on his face. “Do let me tempt you.” And he held out a bite of sweet on silver towards Crowley, as if it were the most natural thing in the world for an angel to be handfeeding a demon in public of an evening.

Crowley found himself wondering whether Aziraphale knew what that looked and sounded like, if he cared. It was clear that the angel, much like Crowley, was not above a bit of teasing now and again. But what did that teasing mean to someone who apparently didn’t experience the more carnal desires himself?

He looked at his companion’s guileless eyes and hopeful expression and decided it didn’t matter. The angel wanted to share sensual pleasures with him, always had done, back as far as offering oysters without the slightest idea they were meant to be an aphrodisiac. For the angel, the oysters were enough on their own. And that, thought Crowley, was _lovely._

Aziraphale was beginning to lower his fork with a little _moue_ of disappointment when Crowley relented.

“Well, if tempting isn’t my line of work anymore, I suppose there’s no reason you can’t hang out your shingle and have a go,” drawled Crowley, with as much disinterest as he could muster. But Crowley thought one pleasure deserved another, in the spirit of sharing tastes that might not generally be the other’s particular cup of tea. So as Aziraphale placed the forkful in Crowley’s mouth, he caught it briefly in his teeth, closed his lips around it and held on a moment longer than was quite proper. He looked straight into Aziraphale’s widening blue eyes and hummed, loudly enough that the vibrations traveled down the silver fork handle to tingle at the angel’s well-manicured fingertips, “Mmmm.”

The angel turned pink and returned the fork slowly to his plate. Crowley let his tongue escape his lips just briefly as he said, “Scandalously good. And look at you, a fully successful temptation under your belt your first day on the job.” He smiled, slowly, as Aziraphale felt blindly for his napkin and distractedly wiped his mouth.

It wasn’t much of a challenge, flustering an angel, but it would forever be among a demon’s favorite pastimes, he felt certain.

“Yes, well,” said Aziraphale, somewhat tartly, recovering himself. “Trained by the Serpent of Eden, it stands to reason that even a complete innocent such as myself might pick up a few wiles.” His eyes narrowed slightly, but stayed crinkled with amusement. “Remind me to go over some thwarting strategies at the next lesson.”

“I’ll be sure to hold you to it,” murmured Crowley. “Sounds promising. Now tell me about some other treasure the young Beast That is Called Dragon considerately shelved in your shop.” And as Aziraphale obediently began extolling the dust jacket of a particularly well-preserved J. Rider Haggard, the demon bought a moment to collect himself.

Right. So. Crowley was not perhaps completely _un_ bothered by this latest turn of events, what with the cake and the tempting and the promise of lessons, but at this moment, the familiar low buzz of wanting the angel in ways he couldn’t have him mingled with the buzz of the alcohol and coffee and felt just as good. If the pleasant hum came with a slight ache, he was glad to have it. He could suffer that small ache for the rest of Creation and consider himself lucky, almost blessed. Crowley was aware of nothing more intensely than the fact that several times in just the past few days, he’d faced the prospect that one of those things he couldn’t have was _any_ Aziraphale at all.

Ludicrous, really, that you could face the loss of one person in so many different ways in so short a time.

First off, Aziraphale had _announced_ himself out of Crowley’s life. Broken things off. “It’s over,” he’d said, and even if the phrasing suggested that there was more to the “things” between them than the angel had ever begun to acknowledge, the way he ended them seemed crushingly final. It had certainly crushed Crowley in what he had then believed was the worst way possible—until he was literally being crushed by the falling bits of flaming bookshop that had already consumed his best friend. For the second time in a single day, Crowley had been forced to face irrevocably losing Aziraphale, and he quickly found that not having Aziraphale in the world _at all_ was infinitely worse than not having him in the world _for him_.

That had all but ended Crowley himself, to the point that the relief he’d felt at his angel’s unexpected resurrection had apparently rendered his own human body impervious not only to hellfire but earthly flames. Driving through them had discorporated a Duke of Hell, and Crowley had barely felt a sting. But hardly had he gotten the angel back than he was staring down his loss _again,_ in as much as the end of the world would have put an end to…well, everything, Aziraphale included. Not to mention the angel’s threatening to stop speaking to Crowley, Armageddon be damned. 

And yet, there they were, angel and demon, soaking up brandy to cap off hour upon hour of the best food, wine, coffee, and conversation—even cake. There was Aziraphale, in his own comfortable body and ridiculous tatty waistcoat and bowtie, looking at Crowley as if it that were a thing he liked to do very much.

So yes, Crowley assumed he’d be bothered in a more vexing way again, but for the all but immortal life of him, he couldn’t think when. The angel always glowed a bit, but Crowley thought he must be giving him a run for his money at the moment.

“Penny,” said Aziraphale, his hands stilling on the glass he’d been toying with beside his now empty plate. “You’ve gone a bit quiet.”

“Mmm,” said Crowley. _Was just thinking how never getting to shag you despite the way you eat cake wasn’t enough to dispel my extreme delight in being able to watch you eat it,_ he didn’t say _._ Sharing his thoughts with Aziraphale was second nature, but so were the little shifts and substitutions he made to keep things within the bounds of what was possible.

Crowley held up his brandy. “I was just thinking I was happy to be here with…” he paused, briefly meeting Aziraphale’s eyes, “a very nice Armagnac.”

Aziraphale flushed in pleasure as if he knew at least partly what Crowley meant and looked down at his own brandy—in a snifter, old fashioned to a fault. He picked it up, swirling it under his nose and gently breathing in. “Oh, that _is_ nice, isn’t it?”

He took a sip, rolling the liquid on his tongue. “ _Hors d’Age,”_ he murmured, then closed his eyes and smiled in a way that was almost pornographically beatific. “Bit like you, really.”

Crowley snorted. “What, _extra old?_ ”

“Crowley!” Aziraphale picked up a spoon and rapped the demon’s knuckles from across the table. “ _Zéro!”_ he scolded, channeling his inner French schoolmistress.

Crowley caught his breath. This had some _serious potential_ in the bothering department.

“Fine, it’s a step up from,” conceded Crowley, “Extra Old. XO.” _Hugs and kisses,_ he didn’t say _._ He did roll his eyes, that being a particular skill he’d cultivated for such moments. “Thanks ever so.”

“We count our age in millennia, my dear,” sniffed Aziraphale, primly. “You can hardly complain.”

“At least I can recognize a _Very Superior Old Pale_ angel when I see one. No need to rap my knuckles over it.” Crowley was considering strategies to encourage activities in the future until he noticed Aziraphale had all but flinched at his words.

“I suppose you’re right,” said the angel quietly, and stared off into his Aramgnac. Then, even more softly, barely a whisper. “I’m sorry.”

Crowley froze. They’d clearly left the brandy behind somewhere, but he had no idea where they’d got to.

Then Aziraphale reached out his hand and traced his forefinger over where he’d rapped Crowley’s knuckles, and time went wonky for a minute.

“I didn’t mean,” the angel said, so slowly, “to cause you any pain over a—a difference in interpretation.”

Crowley hoped that the angel wasn’t waiting for a response, because it might be a century or two before his brain went back online.

Instead, Aziraphale brought his finger to his lips, kissed it, and returned it gently to Crowley’s hand where the imagined hurt had been, and pressed. “There,” he said, took a breath, and seemed to shake something off. “All better,” he said brightly. “XO, hugs and kisses, after all. So no complaining.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” said Crowley, something close to breathless, and definitely lying.

Aziraphale picked up his brandy and took another sip. “Hors d’Age, as I was saying. Beyond age. _Ageless,_ and yet it manages to get more delicious over time.” Another sip, and a sigh. “And I am very glad indeed to be sitting here with both of you ageless entities, in a world that was almost done with aging entirely.” He looked straight at Crowley with one of those smiles that shattered the demon’s heart and gave it its own wings all at once. “In short, I couldn’t be more pleased with the Armagnac. Excellent choice.” 

Crowley, quite rationally, given that the person from whom he most yearned for affection had just been heart-breakingly warm and kind, started to panic. _Wanker,_ he chided himself. _You absolute tosser. Take his hand. Look him in the eye. Say you love the bloody brandy. Say_ something.

And so he did, although it wasn’t necessarily an improvement over stunned silence.

“Right. Yes. Never let it be said I can’t choose a good after dinner drink. Now I’m out of work as a demon, maybe the Ritz will hire me as their new sommelier.” He cast around the table, looking anywhere but at Aziraphale with his face and his smile and his eyes and his ridiculous bowtie, because if he looked at any of that, he’d dissolve into a puddle of ex-demonic goo and that would be the end of a very lovely afternoon and evening.

So he worked himself up to full-on blather. “And I can tell you, if they did hire me that would be end of those bleeding balloon snifters. Insult to our Armagnac, if you want to know the truth. Finest brandies fare better in the tulip glasses, everyone knows that now. But the Ritz can be stuffy.” Crowley cringed. He’d be on to the proper lead content in crystal in a moment. “’S how it attracts a clientele in butterfly ties and velveteen waistcoats, no doubt, but it shouldn’t be allowed to influence its choice in stemware.”

Finally risking a glance, Crowley saw Aziraphale smiling with nothing but affection, warm as tea or hot chocolate in an angel wing mug, as if Crowley was not a blathering idiot who froze at the first sign of the intimacy he spent every waking moment craving. “Very well,” the angel said, and with a snap of his fingers, the glass in his other hand matched Crowley’s.

Crowley’s eyebrows threatened to fuse with his hairline. “Huh. That was easier than most of my attempts at convincing you of literally anything.” He paused. That way lay—Alpha Centauri, echoes of desperate pleading to no avail _._ Backpedaling, he gestured to their glasses. “Just selling you on alcohol took bloody centuries.”

“And see how well that worked out.” Aziraphale held up his new glass as if in a toast. “High time I listened to you more often, wouldn’t you say?” The smile was still there, but with a touch of sadness behind it. “Your track record lately is much better than mine.”

The sad look was gaining on the rest of his face, which then drifted down into his empty hand and hid. “Crowley--”he began, faltering.

“Angel, “ Crowley interrupted, because a sad-faced angel was not something he’d ever handled with any equanimity, “If--if you do or _don’t_ listen to me now and again on stemware, it won’t be the end of the world. We’ve just seen to that, yeah?”

Aziraphale shook his head, still cradled in his hand. “Do let me—” he tried to look up, but seemed to fail. “I just—I wouldn’t have thought I could be so wrong about … everything.”

And he sounded so sad, and lost, and _penitent,_ that Crowley was forced to resort to direct communication. “Angel, come off it. My track record isn’t so bloody fantastic, and you know it. We shouldn’t have run off together. Lost all this.” Crowley gestured around, “Brandy. And people. Probably busy inventing new cocktails right now. And…and sushi apps, most likely. And they’d be gone, all of them, if you’d have listened to me. ”

“You’re very kind—”

“Pah!” grimaced Crowley. There were, after all, limits. “Vicious hellfiend, I think you mean.

“Of course,” said Aziraphale, with a watery smile, “quite right.” He took a deep breath, squared his shoulders, and said more firmly. “But Crowley—and you will let me finish, serpent, because you deserve to hear this, and I deserve to have to say it—if I had listened to you sooner, on certain matters, I might not have spared the world, but I would have spared you a great deal of pain, and sometimes it doesn’t feel as if that was the right trade.”

He looked up, made sure he had Crowley’s attention—no chance he didn’t—and looked down again, as if he had notes he’d prepared in advance scrawled on the backs of his hands.

“I was frightened, but that doesn’t excuse—I…I was so unkind.” He was twisting his napkin into knots and his face looked as if it might crumple. “I think about it, I thought about it before I bollocksed my way up to heaven yesterday, and after I blundered my way down again, and I thought about it last night while you were sleeping, and in Hell while I was—bathing, strangely enough—and I can’t—I can hardly believe it was me, saying those things. But now that I see what my, my _ilk,”_ he said sourly, “is really like, I’m forced to think it was just me being true to my angelic nature.” Aziraphale practically spat the last words, but when his wide blue eyes looked up at Crowley, there were _tears_ in them. “I know you don’t like—talking like this. And I know you’re fond of me, but—”

“Fond,” Crowley repeated, flatly. _Run off to the stars with me,_ _I’m fond of you…_

“Yes, it’s in your eyes, I’ve always seen it, and now it’s even more—the way you look at…brandy…isn’t so different from the way you look at me—” he paused, interrupted by a snort from Crowley, then soldiered on. “But I understand a fondness for brandy, and yet I can’t imagine why you’d still look that way at me when I…managed everything _so badly._ ”

Crowley suddenly flashed to Gabriel, taunting _his angel_ , urging him on to _die,_ making him feel _less than_ for millennia to the point that a being of pure love thought he didn’t deserve _fondness_ from a demon even Hell rejected.

“Fond,” Crowley repeated, slowly, dangerously. “You think I’m _fond_ of you, and you find that sssurprising. Makes ssense in a way, if you think I’d been drawn to you by your precision planning and efficiency,” he hissed, all but snarling, “That I’d be put out you’d blundered your way into helping sstop the Apocalypsse after recognizing you’d made a misstake. But I think it’s more that you’ve been hanging around with the wrong…ethereal crowd. Not me who cassts people out for making mistakess. Fond. _”_ He paused, swallowing. “You’re right. I am too fond.”

An already stunned Aziraphale looked up in startled recognition, but Crowley held up a hand. “I am too fond, and therefore thou mayst think my behaviour light. But trust me, gentleman, I'll prove more true than those that have more cunning to be strange.” The words came as naturally as they had the first time he’d said them, back when they’d been somewhat more in fashion.

Crowley had uttered them under his breath to Aziraphale’s back as the angel left him waiting in a public house in Bishopsgate sometime in the 1590s. It was the first time they’d seen each other properly in ages, and no sooner had they sat down than Aziraphale was running off on Gabriel’s emergency bidding to bless some perfectly beastly patron of the church around the corner.

Of course, Aziraphale had never heard him say anything of the kind, as Crowley was hardly likely to chase after him to St Helen’s bloody church. But apparently, the bloke at the next table over had heard him perfectly and joined him for an ale and a bit of a chat until Aziraphale returned, apologetic and flushed and annoyingly forgivable.

Crowley hazarded a glance, but though Aziraphale’s whole attention was on him, his face was unreadable.

 _Too much,_ Crowley thought. _Cocked it right up. Play ends in_ suicide, _there’s some safe, neutral territory for the two of us to revisit_.

Crowley braced himself. But when the angel spoke, he sounded only surprised, and not entirely steady. “Oh, my dear, was _that_ one of yours? So early? He wrote that ages before – before we spoke of Hamlet, and I went to Edinburgh. When?”

Crowley shrugged. “Turns out we were in his neighborhood one afternoon when you’d ditched me to run after Gabriel again. I suppose I was practicing what I should have said. Not always so easy to convince you of things. Have to make a multi-pronged argument. Use all my wiles. For centuries. Then you come around, eventually.”

“Yes, a scant 500 years later and I’ve already learned to trust you. Oh, Crowley. You did prove more true, didn’t you?” Crowley was only beginning to enjoy the warmth suffusing his entire being at the words “trust you” and “more true” when Aziraphale continued, concern pulling his face into a subdued frown. “It’s lovely, but it’s a—” he swallowed hard. “A very sad story. And you always said you liked the comedies best.”

“Well. You know.” Star-crossed lovers. Warring clans. Bit too on the nose, especially back when men played both parts. “It’s not like he consulted people on the context of where he’d use their best lines once he’d swiped them. I didn’t care for the ending on that one.”

Aziraphale’s brow remained furrowed but the tension in his face eased slightly. “I’m glad to hear it. Double suicide as romance—I’d supposed that was your lot’s idea.”

Crowley shook his head. “Design flaw, that, I’m afraid. Puny mortal bodies have a hard enough time containing immortal love, but when they lose it—” He looked down at his hands, one of which seemed to have taken up a fork and started grinding it into the table between the fingers of the other in an attempt to stop from trembling. “When they lose it—” The tremble had migrated to his voice. _Bloody hell._

A well-manicured hand grasped his wrist and held it firmly. “Crowley,” came Aziraphale’s voice, steady now, full-on angelic and kind, “They don’t lose it. They don’t ever lose it, they can’t.” He squeezed the wrist gently, soothing and warm.

“Easy for you to say,” muttered Crowley, striving for control. “You’re an angel. My entire existence refutes that argument, you know perfectly well—”

“ _It does not._ I _am_ an angel, and even if that doesn’t mean everything I thought it did, it does mean I know a thing or two about immortal love. It’s _immortal._ You can’t lose it, dear. Even if it isn’t … manifest. It is simply always there.”

 _Stay present,_ Crowley directed himself. _Don’t discorporate. Stay here, with the silver knife next to the brandy glass, half an inch of Armagnac still to drink. With the espresso cup at four o’clock, empty. Porcelain. Bright yellow lemon peel to the side. Fork in your hand, threatening damage to the table. Hand on your wrist, over the sleeve. Hand of an angel, channeling…_

Crowley looked up. The being before him showed no sign of his fussy, comfortable angel, but was instead a glowing, beautiful, ethereal form almost too perfect to be seen, radiating nothing but love, and peace, and calm. It was overpowering. Healing. Completely strange and familiar at the same time.

He put down his fork and covered the angel’s hand on his sleeve as if it wasn’t a mind-bendingly terrifying and brave thing to do, but a natural gesture of comfort and shared affection.

“ _Angel._ Are you _smiting_ me with your beatific, angelic reflection of divine love?”

“Why, is it working?” Aziraphale looked a bit—cocky, actually.

“Yes, but—” It wasn’t bad, not at all. “It’s a bit _odd._ It—tingles.”

Aziraphale chuckled, immediately settling back into his own dowdy, ridiculous, _more_ perfect self. “Not exactly _smiting,_ dear boy. That wouldn’t feel quite like that. If I smote you, even now, you’d know it.” A flash of that power, but a little darker, showed behind his otherwise kind, familiar eyes. “More of a blessing, but—especially tailored. An experiment. I would never have dared to do it before, not to a demon. I’d have been sacked, and you’d have been—I don’t know, possibly scorched, or worse.” He smoothed his hands over the table, a bit self-satisfied. “But you seem to be quite fire resistant, these days—and of course they’re all afraid of us now. They won’t come near you, not for a while. So, when you looked like you could do with a refresher course—well, God’s Love, We Deliver, and all that.”

“That’s—that’s a meal delivery service in America for the poor and infirm.”

“And the elderly, yes, that’s right. You fit the bill all around.” Aziraphale patted the wrist he’d been holding. “There, there, you extra-old thing,” he said, and smiled _wickedly_ and angelically at the same time. “You’ll be on your feet again in no time.”

“Divine love doesn’t stop you from being a bit of a smug bastard, does it?” _Thank—_ well, _God,_ he supposed, _for that._

“Certainly not,” agreed Aziraphale. “I need to maintain a palatable delivery vessel. You wouldn’t have me any other way.”

 _Palatable._ _Have me. Does he ever_ even _stop to think?_ _Or does he bloody well know?_ Crowley grabbed at the hand that was slowly withdrawing across the table and held it fast. “Angel,” he said slowly, “Don’t presume that you know all the ways I’d have you.” He drew back, holding the angel’s startled eyes with his own.

“And how should I presume?” Aziraphale asked, under his breath, then winced and shook his head. He laughed breathily, never breaking Crowley’s gaze. “I suppose I shouldn’t do. You’ve been surprising me for six thousand years. I doubt you’ve run out of wiles.” He took a last sip of brandy. “Now we have some time, perhaps I’ll find out.”

 _Or perhaps you’ll give me a heart attack and I’ll come back as an aardvark,_ Crowley didn’t say.

“And indeed there will be time,” murmured Crowley instead, going for inscrutable and mysterious rather than pathetic.

But Aziraphale winced again. “Oh, dear, did you catch that? Of course you did, so obvious by now. It’s probably on—I don’t know, bedsheets at this point. Although if it is, may I never see them. Housewares of J. Alfred Prufrock, sign of the end times after all, what?”

“ _What?_ Do I need to remind you that you do not actually have a butler name Jeeves? Are you suffering some kind of bodyswap space-time after-effects? Glitching a bit?” Crowley was only half teasing. There wasn't a lot of data on side-effects.

“Rather. I mean to say, what? No—fine, sorry. Period flashback, is all. Contemporaries, if not exactly—kindred, Eliot and Wodehouse. Plum found old Tom overwrought, but Eliot would have given his left testicle to write like Wodehouse, if you want to know the truth. He had a nearly complete collection.” Aziraphale shook himself. “Best stay away from Prufrock, to be honest. Bit too close to the bone, for me. Bad things happen. Didn’t mean to bring it up—didn’t imagine you’d catch it. You’re always saying you don’t read.”

“I don’t have to read the ones I memorize.” Talk about close to the bone. Anthony J. Crowley, for his part, didn’t need J. Alfred Prufrock to help him wonder whether he dared or not. Because he didn’t dare. Obviously. Not a minute ago, the angel had been saying maybe now they had time to explore the wily ways Crowley might think to have Aziraphale, and Crowley had followed up on the hint with that well-known aphrodisiac, Modernist poetry, topped off with a side of likening his companion to Bertie Wooster. _Suave._

In his defense, he was still staggered from being experimentally _blessed,_ of all things. He couldn’t be expected to untangle an angel’s intermittent flirtatiousness from reflections of divine love. Or to process his aversion to Prufrock or use of the word “testicle” with reference to Eliot’s apparent admiration of Gussie Finknottle’s creator. Modernist poetry seemed straightforward by comparison.

“’S not so on the mark, anyway, Prufrock,” Crowley offered. “You weren’t measuring anything with your silly coffee spoon, you were _disciplining_ me, as I recall.”

Aziraphale colored, but held his head up high. “Well. Clearly it didn’t work. You’re terribly unruly, I’ll have to try harder.”

 _Yes, please._ Crowley wished he could pull off smoldering, but it was all a little much. “Time for that, as well,” he muttered, and he drained his brandy glass.

“Oh, yes.” Aziraphale beamed. “World enough and time.”

Crowley almost choked and fell into a fit of coughing. “All right?” Aziraphale asked, voice more relaxed if brimming with amused concern.

“Yeah,” Crowley croaked. “Didn’t actually need to be breathing. I’d just—I’d had that line stuck in my head, past few days. What with the—end of the world, and all. Caught me off guard to hear _you_ say it—don’t know why, it’s a bit obvious as well, out of context.”

“Was it out of context, then?” Aziraphale asked, fiddling with his coffee spoon again.

“If you’re quoting it, I’d assume it must be,” said Crowley, trying to grasp on to some element of the upper hand. “Do you even know what it’s about?”

Speaking of being too on the nose. _Bloody hell._

Aziraphale raised his eyebrows and Crowley thought he looked a little bristly around the edges. “Oh, my Heavens no. I’m just an immortal antiquarian bookseller, you can’t expect me to recognize obscure poetry like that.”

“Oh, be quiet.” Of all things to get in a snit about, and an angel picks aspersions cast on his familiarity with one of lovepoetry dot bloody com’s top ten. But the angel was only warming up.

“Of course, since I’m an angel, I don’t get distracted by the flashy, tearing birds of prey part at the end, so I can see he meant to ironize the whole business. We’re not meant to _agree_ with the exhortation to rush carnal love on pain of death to avoid having to get it on with worm-ridden corpses.”

Crowley stared. “I can’t tell you how glad I am I didn’t have any of our Armagnac in my mouth just now, because I would have spit it all over the table and we’d have been thrown out. _What?_ ”

“Obviously,” said the angel, a bit overdoing the fussy, “the poem is written so that the first part—where love takes its time, and—lets the beloved be adored for centuries and doesn’t, force the issue—well, that’s what is given the rhetorical advantage by the structure of the argument, is all, whereas ‘let’s get to it while you’re still young and pretty’ falls a bit flat.” He sniffed. “But I gather by your reaction that that isn’t how you read it.”

_You go too fast for me._

The after-effects of the blessing and the buzzing and the never being bothered had definitively worn off. Crowley had managed to _offend the angel,_ who’d been in the process of infusing him with love and _some_ variety of flirtation, by getting tangled up in out of context _bloody_ poetry _._

He didn’t know what he’d said, again. It wasn’t a new world, after all, or he wasn’t a new demon, so it didn’t matter what bloody world it was. He was a _fucking_ broken record skipping on a _fucking love song_ and getting the _lyrics_ wrong.

“No!” Crowley was signaling for the bill, scanning the room back, and forth, and around, and anywhere but at Aziraphale. “I mean, yes, I mean I don’t—I don’t have a bloody essay on it, I like—lines of poetry, I sometimes take them as they are. But—but yeah, I like the sound of the, the first part, Marvell, sure. What shocked me was you even—” He picked up his napkin, stared at it, threw it back down on the table. “Look. Never mind. There’s absolutely nothing that I can say that won’t put me in a world of trouble. Take my word for it. Demon and all. Can’t be helped. I bow to your superior knowledge of love. I just, you know, devour, and all that. All carnal, all the time, me.”

Crowley looked frantically for the waitress again, and his relief when she materialized at the table, suddenly and much to her own surprise, was palpable.

“Crowley!” Aziraphale took the bill from the waitress and silenced her with a small stack of unusually crisp notes. “That’ll be all, dear. Thank you ever so much for your patience. Do keep the rest for yourself.”

He was up from the table and around to draw back Crowley’s chair with an astonishing burst of speed.

“My dear, you mustn’t think it. We’ve both had a great deal to drink, but I didn’t say anything of the kind.” With a snap of his fingers, they were standing by the Victoria Embankment overlooking the Thames. To Crowley’s concerned stare, Aziraphale waved his hand vaguely in the direction of the dining room full of people who’d just witnessed an abrupt miracle. “Never mind about them. Taken care of. This was important.”

Aziraphale turned to the water and leaned into the stone railing, gazing out over the deep rose reflections of the waking city lights and pale evening clouds. Crowley turned away from the water and leaned backwards in the same direction as Aziraphale, but without his usual sprawl. “I’d asked for the bill,” he muttered. “But. Thank you.” He was staring steadily at the row of trees lining the pavement, not toward the angel at all. “Struck you as a—nice time for a stroll, then?”

Aziraphale addressed the river with equal determination. “Thought we could use some air. I was afraid we were talking in circles, but at cross purposes, which made for confusing geometry.”

“Ahh. Can’t have that. Listen,” Crowley continued to the trees, “It’s fine. We’re drunk. I don’t even remember what we were talking about, to be honest.”

“Don’t lie,” Aziraphale sighed. “I can’t say it doesn’t suit you, or that you aren’t good at it, because neither of those things are at all true, but I would prefer it if you didn’t.”

“Oh, come off it.” Crowley glanced quickly at the angel, enough to see his gaze fixed doggedly on the opposite shore. “I wasn’t exactly—it’s not lying, and you know it. I was trying to give—”

“Give me an out. Yes. You were being kind—and I’ve just called you a liar, so I think it cancels out any acknowledgement of your basic decency, not to worry.” Aziraphale sounded grave and tired, and Crowley would have done anything to stop it.

“Well, all right. This once.” Crowley sprawled back a little further. He’d backpedal all the way back to hanging out with Gabriel and Michael, if he had to. Tortures of heaven had nothing on this. “We were talking about poetry, so of course I understand your sense of extreme urgency. But in your role as a bookseller, you might be liable to overestimate the importance of verse to the general non-reader.”

He glanced up. _See me,_ he pleaded. _Look at me. See how I didn’t mean it, whatever it was._ But he was too afraid to take off his dark glasses for any such message to be at all apparent. He tossed his head, breezy as fuck, he hoped. “I’d go so far as to say we might have left the restaurant the more pedestrian way and our friendship would have survived.” Hardly a tremble, even at the end of that sentence.

“Perhaps I thought we’d taken enough grave risks for the day—you vexing serpent, would you please let me be serious!” Aziraphale darted a glance toward Crowley, but didn’t hold it, which left the demon cold with loss. What risk had he taken, then? Had he gone one flirtatious joke, one romantic allusion too far? What did the angel think of him, that he was suddenly too awful to look at? It’s not as if he’d taken his glasses off.

But the angel’s voice, at least, did not sound cold, if a little brittle with determination. “We’ve been drinking, and it’s all well and good to argue about poetry, or anything you like, really, they say sport is healthy. But as someone whom you have rightly accused of taking a holier than thou tone with you, I would like very much to tell you, here, where it’s a bit more private, that I am not, absolutely not, doing that with respect to your—your personal preferences. With regard to the activities referenced in that poem.”

Crowley had absolutely no idea what the angel was on about, and he was still practically shaking with the consciousness of his own emotional ineptitude, but he had to laugh. He wasn’t sure he’d ever seen an angel look less comfortable in the earth’s entire life. The tightness in his own chest relaxed a notch in a tremendous swell of—fondness, actually. “Well, thank God for that,” he said. “I don’t what I would have done if you’d judged my attitude to ‘His Coy Mistress.’ Don’t know how I could have gone on, and I’m right out of holy water.”

“Oh, how can you joke about—do be serious, for one minute. I’m trying my best, and it hardly comes easily to me.”

“What, being serious? No, it doesn’t, does it? Not in those bowties, at any rate. But you do all right when you put your mind to it.”

“Crowley! You know perfectly well what I mean.”

Of course, Crowley had absolutely no idea. “Oh, yeah, couldn’t miss it. You’re sinfully explicit. Say ‘activities referenced in that poem’ to me again, you savage.” 

“Must you mock me at all times,” Aziraphale sputtered, blushing.

“Yeah, sorry. It’s the bit of the Arrangement that hasn’t been suspended.”

“You’re such a menace. But,” the angel settled himself visibly, reset, and continued. “What I want to make clear, is that, going forward particularly, I would never judge, _will_ never judge, or even _say_ anything about your—your habits in that regard. I don’t have any right, certainly not now. And to be fair, I’ve never asked. So don’t go—assuming I’m judging you. Because I’m not.”

_Oh._

Never mind that the habits he was so generously being pardoned for consisted largely of a sad wank every few decades over a pilfered bowtie and were hardly worth the Effort. It was an effort of a different kind, the one the angel was currently making, that was at issue. Already dislodged somewhat by the utter ridiculousness of the pair of them, the sudden panic that had overtaken Crowley—that the angel was telling his Godforsaken demon self he’d gotten it all wrong, again, and to Hell with him—utterly vanished. That wasn’t what was happening, not at all.

The angel’s anxious, earnest face was an open book of care and worry, if Crowley had only bothered to read it. _Aziraphale_ was afraid of getting it wrong. Of saying the wrong thing, despite trying his best to say the right thing, and harming a friendship that mattered to him. And there was nothing, not one thing on God’s green and grimy earth, that Crowley had more empathy with than that.

Crowley spun himself around to face the river and stretched his long body backwards toward the sky. “I know I already thanked you, God, but do accept my gratitude for this Angel of Infinite Tolerance, which you know I need in my endless, endless carnal proclivities that occupy my every waking moment _not_ spent in his wholesome presence!”

“You sacrilegious serpent!” Out of the corner of his eye, Crowley could see the angel equal parts exasperated, scandalized, and charmed. He folded his arms over his waistcoat and his bright hair stood out around his head like a tetchy halo. “Were you thinking you wanted a bit of a bathe, here, in the Thames? Because if so, do keep that up and I’ll be helping you in directly.”

“Are you there, God? It’s me, Crowley.” The demon held his hands up in supplication. “Thank you for the gift of this Teddy Bear of Ominous Vengeance, with which in your wisdom you have replaced my Tolerant Angel of the Nonpocalypse …” And then he almost fell into the river of his own accord, he was laughing so hard.

Aziraphale grasped onto Crowley’s jacket to hold him steady, then shook him slightly. “You must get away from the river, you horrid hellfiend. It’s too tempting. I can’t be responsible for my actions, standing next to open water with a great gangly satanic prat whom I happen to know wears a bathing singlet like nobody’s business.” He yanked Crowley backwards by the collar, turned him around, and started marching him off, though practically doubled over in laughter himself. “Off!”

“Yes,” said Crowley, leaning slightly into the touch. He couldn’t help it. “By all means, let’s go, the two of us, while the evening is sprawling on the horizon like a—really knackered demon on a sofa—”

“Crowley, in this case, paraphrase _is_ heresy, and I will be forced to smite you.”

“I will obey, Great Principality of O Level Literature, for I know too well the sting of thine coffee spoon, and also because by all accounts Eliot was a right wanker.” Aziraphale was touchy enough on the subject that it was bound to be something personal. Poet’d worked blocks from the bookshop for years, after all. Bound to have come in from time to time. 

“You know, he _really_ was. But let’s save that for another time,” said Aziraphale, still propelling the demon forward with a hand between his shoulder blades.

“Fine. Mind your hands, you know how I am. Could get carnal without a moment’s notice.”

By which he meant, in order: quite the opposite; you obviously have no idea; and, by all means, if by “without a moment’s notice” you mean only after millennia of hopeless dithering, express permission, and practically for the first time.

“You’re intolerable,” was the reply, which Crowley dared to hope meant the opposite, as well. And Aziraphale let his hand linger on Crowley’s back as they walked together in silence, both shaking with laughter.

“Is the bookshop set up so you can be comfortable?” Crowley asked some minutes later. “Shall I walk you home?”

“That would be a very suitable peace offering after your cruel torture, thank you.” Aziraphale was glowing again, relief and affection radiating out of him like light. “Shop’s not completely as I’d like yet, but I can miracle an extra chair into a sofa for you, if you prefer. Would you care for a nightcap?” he asked, only slightly eagerly, “I’m afraid Adam has left a store of sour mash Kentucky small batch bourbon in place of my best single malts, but a dash of the New World wouldn’t be inappropriate.”

 _You go too fast,_ a faraway voice echoed. And Crowley vowed, that he wouldn’t. He really didn’t understand, at all, everything that had just gone on with his angel, no matter how desperately he wanted to. But whatever it was, the sense of time spreading out before them had seemed as comforting to his friend as to himself, despite the pitfalls of literary context.

“That sounds absolutely fantastic, but maybe in the near future. It’s been, you know, a bit of a day _,_ and you may not sleep, but I _am_ a knackered demon.”

Aziraphale turned to him, all kindness and concern. “Oh, my dear, of _course_ you are. How utterly thoughtless of me. And you can’t have slept so soundly last night, what with an intruder pottering about your flat and the thought of eternal judgment and torture in the morning.”

“Yes, the terrible intrusion of my best friend not dead but actually in my flat making tea, what a nightmare that was, I’m glad you realize the extent of my suffering.”

“Then it was terribly kind of you to—”

“Shut it,” growled Crowley, incurably fond.

Aziraphale shook his head. “Perfectly horrid of you to invite my corruptionless person into your den of iniquity and botanical trauma, as I was saying. Best go fumigate the stench of my goodness and come round tomorrow for another bout of fruitless temptation and whiskey.”

“Sounds perfect,” said Crowley, softly, because it did.

“You know, dear boy, you needn’t bother to walk me home, when you’re so tired. It’s not as if I can’t manage to—”

Panic shoved its little tendrils around Crowley’s organs as he kept pace with Aziraphale’s steps on the pavement. And he’d finally been pulling it all off so well. “Would you mind, though? If I walked you home? You don’t—it’s all right?” His voice sounded thin and reedy and he hated it.

Aziraphale looked at him wonderingly. “Of course I don’t, what—why wouldn’t it be? And you’re more than welcome to come in. You’d just said you were tired.”

“I am, it’s just—” Crowley could feel his breath hitching, getting rapid. So he stopped it, but that didn’t seem to help. “Much as I enjoy hellfire and all, it wasn’t as much fun as you might think, going to the bookshop and finding it on fire, thinking you were burned. Made me—a bit queasy. So I—”

“I would so much,” Aziraphale said, softly, “appreciate it if you would walk me home, as it has been such a long day.”

“Yeah. All right,” said Crowley, “fine.” And he experimented with breathing again. It didn’t go all that well, but it was better.

“And Crowley, I’m afraid I did have rather a lot to drink. Would you mind awfully if I took your arm, as we walk? I could do with a bit of steadying.”

Crowley would have blessed the angel himself, if he could have. Almost absently, by the force of long if not recently practiced habit, he held his arm out, bent at the elbow, and Aziraphale placed his hand in the crook, a warm steady pressure. “Matches your outfit, this custom,” Crowley said quietly, and squeezed the hand ever so gently between his bicep and forearm.

“Seems so recently I saw more men walk this way,” said Aziraphale, a bit wistful. “Here, I mean, in London. I’m not even quite sure when it went out of fashion.”

“With your waistcoat,” said Crowley, with a sidelong glance.

“Then it’s sure to be back any day now,” said Aziraphale. “As has clearly happened with my waistcoat.”

Crowley snorted and Aziraphale batted at his arm with his other hand, and they settled into silence. Their paces fell together naturally and Crowley savored every point at which the angel’s form and weight and warmth made contact with him. There, in the crook of his arm, and along it, and even now and again down the length of his side, Azirahale’s sturdy body asserted its presence with a gentle pressure, every point of contact reassuring, saying _I’m here, I’m with you,_ and even, _I choose you over Heaven_.

Heaven was a wretched place, of course, but it was still _something_ , thought Crowley. Why get in a twist over questions of innuendo when all the most important things were being made so blissfully clear?

“Did you,” began Aziraphale, and then cleared his throat. “Did you, back there—actually thank God? Uh. In between the mocking?”

Crowley shrugged. “I must be very drunk, but yeah, I did.” He patted the hand in the crook of his arm awkwardly. “She’s not my favorite entity, but after the, erm, divine love residual you provided, I thought I could at least say thank you for sending me an angel.”

(Adam had embellished the Bentley CD collection with a greater variety of New Wave music from the seventies and eighties, and Crowley had spent a few happy minutes listening to early Talking Heads as he’d made certain that the other love of his life was quite in working order while the one was busy with his books.)

“I wouldn’t say She _sent_ me, exactly,” Aziraphale was saying, “I was—uh—Hell-bent, or something very like it. But at least She didn’t try to stop me, which was kind. And it will be less awkward around the holidays if you’re at least on speaking terms.”

“The holidays?” repeated Crowley, in wonder.

“Yes, I understand those family squabbles can get so awkward. And I _do_ look forward to seeing you in a Christmas jumper.” And with that, Aziraphale pressed more firmly into Crowley’s side, just for a moment, and that glorious feeling of never being bothered by anything ever again settled back down around the demon like a loving, winged embrace.

They wandered from the embankment past Covent Garden and the bright marquis lights of the West End, then up through Soho, its bars spilling over their wide doors onto the street, the air thick with beer and smoke. No one was looking at the angel and the demon walking arm and arm. It had been a long time since anyone paid attention to what kinds of couples strolled through Soho, even after it had gotten so posh and polished.

“Oh, look, here we are.” Aziraphale gazed at his bookshop from across the street. “I am _so_ glad it’s back with us.”

“So am I,” said Crowley, reflectively. “I didn’t much fancy having to tell you it was gone.” He shuddered.

“No, I could see you didn’t.” Aziraphale turned to face Crowley, relinquishing his grasp on one arm to take hold of both. “All’s well that ends well, though, yes? I do hope you’ll still be able to—spend some time inside again, without it bringing up too many unpleasant memories?”

“Oh, yeah, sure to.” Crowley yearned to follow Aziraphale into his shop, curl up on a sofa, and make sure the angel stayed corporated right where he belonged. “But not tonight. Knackered. And you likely don’t even keep a bed for yourself.”

“I do,” said Aziraphale, letting go of Crowley. “Or rather, I did. Didn’t even think to check on it earlier, to be honest with you.”

“I’m sure not,” chuckled Crowley, “Bit of a non-event when you have Infamous Bibles to account for.”

“Exactly,” sniffed Aziraphale, as they crossed the street to the shop door. “I’m _so_ glad you have your priorities in order.” He paused, turned to open the door, then hesitated again. “Crowley,” he said, turning toward him with wide, hesitant, but hopeful eyes, “I do hope very much that you’ll call on me.”

Crowley smiled and shook his head. “ _Call_ on you, angel? Only on the condition that you never update your vocabulary.”

“Ah,” said Aziraphale, with a real degree of relief. “Then it seems a sure thing.”

Crowley didn’t feel the need to assure the angel that he was the walking definition of a sure thing.

“And Crowley—I know you’re tired, but—we may have world enough and time and all that, but please don’t nap for years, or weeks, or even many days. I’ll become worried, what with, oh, everything.” And Crowley could see the worry hovering around his round, still hopeful face, fluttering anxious and angelic.

It matched the panic tendrils quickly spreading through Crowley’s own chest. “I’ll be by tomorrow, angel, if that’s all right,” he said, a bit too quickly. “Want to see if that kid left you any comic books tucked away in your prophecy collection.” He thought the last bit sounded admirably casual. Fine addition.

“Perish the thought! But do come round, yes? Good. Well. Good night. Thank you for braving Heaven for me, and for a lovely afternoon and evening.”

Crowley wasn’t sure how you could love someone so much and still be standing, but it looked as if he’d be getting more opportunities to practice.

“Thanks for dinner. And, the Armagnac, and the argument, and the—” he paused, gestured to include the world, blessings, apologies, cake. “And the not being dead,” he finished, as that was the big thing, really.

“Ah. Yes. I hope to pull that off again tomorrow—wouldn’t want you to miss it.” Aziraphale stood in the doorway of his beloved bookshop, suffused in lamplight and shy affection, and offered Crowley the future.

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world, Aziraphale,” said Crowley.

And with that, the demon headed off to Mayfair for a sensible night in, the hours before an early bed largely spent in contemplating his great good fortune, working to accept love, divine and otherwise, and welcoming the wealth of time he’d been granted in which to sort them out. Like a proper adult.

Possibly.

Or, he turned the corner, stalked into a nearby bar, and spent the rest of the evening demanding of the bartender and anyone who would listen what, in Heaven or Hell’s name, it actually _meant_ for someone to go on about immortal love, and remaining a _palatable vessel_ , for Christ’s sake, all while handfeeding you cake and getting testy about your supposed carnal reading of Marvell’s “Coy Mistress”?

It could have gone either way, really. But it’s probably best to remember, in pondering likelihoods, that for a long time, a demon could get in real trouble, doing the right thing. And that old habits die slowly, their voices dying with a dying fall beneath the music from a Spanish bar in Soho.


End file.
